June 10, 2019

Whole Building LCA for large developments

Two marquee properties have completed their Whole Building Life Cycle Assessments using the Athena Impact Estimator.

Bank of America Tower, (Skanska Development) in Houston Texas and the Joyce Centre for Partnership and Innovation at Mohawk College were both able to make significant reductions to their environmental and embodied carbon footprints using the Impact Estimator.

In the case of Capitol Tower, the building designers were able to refine the concrete mixes sufficiently to save 1 million pounds of CO2. Additionally, they were awarded the Whole Building LCA Credit for LEED helping them to achieve their LEED Platinum pre-certification.

The Joyce Centre for Partnership and Innovation at Mohawk College also used the Impact Estimator during their design phase helping the team gain a better understanding of the buildings embodied versus operating carbon footprint. This ground-breaking building is expected to operate at a negative carbon consumption, and potentially offset its own embodied footprint making it only the second project to earn certification in the Canada Green Building Council’s (CaGBC) cutting-edge Zero Carbon Building program.

For more information on these case studies click here

Banner graphic courtesy of Sean Coffey, Mohawk College.